“Those whose soul is well tuned to play its part in all these ways, those I call wise and perfect men, and declare to possess all the virtues; those I regard as truly educated.”[560]
Thus the object of Isokrates was rather to impart culture and polish to his pupils than to teach them rhetoric; it is in this point that he differs from the other professors who taught the same sort of rhetoric as he did at Athens and have now been forgotten, and from the logographoi, who taught the kind of speaking which suited the Athenian law-courts, without professing to supply anything but a technical knowledge of their particular subject.
In an Athenian trial the prosecutor and defendant had each to deliver a speech for themselves; afterwards, regular advocates might address the jury in some cases, but this was rare. So the duty of an Athenian lawyer was simply to write speeches for his clients to deliver, not to speak himself. Thus the metic Lusias, who had no right to speak in a court himself, was a famous lawyer, or logographos, speech-writer, as the Hellenes called him.
Mantitheos, say, finds himself involved in a lawsuit. He comes to Lusias and explains the circumstances. Lusias masters the details, looks up the laws on the question, and studies his client’s age, character, and so forth. He then writes a speech sufficiently dramatised to come naturally from Mantitheos’ mouth. In composing it he will simulate the indignation which he supposes his client to feel, he will adopt the nonchalant air of injured innocence which Mantitheos showed in telling the story, and so on, till the speech is a real bit of dramatisation like the speeches in a tragedy. When composed, the speech would be carried off by Mantitheos, learnt by heart, and duly recited. It is all a bit of acting on Lusias’ part. The habit of simulating feelings when writing speeches was dangerous, when the logographos came forward to speak in his own person on some question. Demosthenes never quite escapes the suspicion of acting and posing, even in his most impressive moments.
Besides these clients, the Athenian lawyers had permanent pupils, who either intended to be lawyers themselves or thought the study would help them in a political life. Their methods of teaching, as may be seen from Plato’s _Phaidros_, resembled those of Isokrates. In the dialogue called by his name, Phaidros is going out to walk off the effects of sitting indoors too long.[561] He had been listening to Lusias, “the cleverest speech-writer of the age,” reciting one of his speeches, on which he had spent much labour. Phaidros had made him repeat it several times, and has now borrowed the book in order to learn it by heart during his walk. Sokrates persuades him to read it aloud, in doing which he is quite carried away by its eloquence.[562] Sokrates then proceeds to criticise the style and matter of the speech,[563] and to compose one of his own on the same subject to show how it ought to be treated.